5 Musical Styles Featured at the
American Originals Concert
Blues, Jazz,
Bluegrass, Cajun & Zydeco,
Barbershop
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BLUES |
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When you think of the blues, you think about misfortune,
betrayal and regret. The blues is also
about overcoming hard luck, saying what you feel, ridding yourself of
frustration, letting your hair down, and simply having fun.
The blues has deep roots in African-American
history. The blues originated on Southern plantations in the 19th Century. Its
inventors were slaves, ex-slaves and the descendants of slaves who became
sharecroppers and who sang as they toiled in the cotton and vegetable
fields. It's generally accepted that the music evolved from African spirituals,
African chants, work songs, and other forms.
The blues grew up in the Mississippi Delta
just upriver from New Orleans.
Once the Delta blues made their way up the Mississippi to urban areas, the
music evolved into electrified Chicago blues and other regional blues styles. A
decade or so later, the blues gave birth to both rhythm
'n blues and rock 'n roll.
During the middle to late 1800s, the Deep
South was home to hundreds of seminal bluesmen who helped to shape the music.
The legacy of the earliest blues pioneers can still be heard in 1920s and '30s
recordings from several Southern states. This music is not far removed from the
field hollers and work songs of the slaves and sharecroppers. Many of the
earliest blues musicians incorporated the blues into a wider repertoire. Some
of these early musicians included blues pioneers from the 1920s such as Son
House, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Leadbelly, Charlie Patton and Robert
Johnson. The playing of blues by bands may have evolved from early jazz
bands, gospel choirs, and jug bands.
When the country blues moved to the cities and
other locales, it took on various regional characteristics. Hence the St. Louis
blues, the Memphis blues, the Louisiana blues, etc. Chicago bluesmen such as John Lee Hooker and Muddy Waters were the first to
electrify the blues and add drums and piano in the late 1940s.
Today there are many different "shades" of the
blues: Traditional
county blues, Jump blues, Boogie-woogie, Chicago blues, Cool blues, Texas
blues, and many others. Our next artists represent the best of Delta blues.
Please welcome The Sonny Moorman group.
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The jazz movement originated in the southern city of New Orleans
in the 1890's. Jazz developed as African Americans combined the energy and
rhythms of African music with the sound and instruments of the western world.
This style was condemned at first as the Devil's music. However, it soon became
more widely accepted and spread across the United States and the world.
Jazz has the power to dazzle audiences when
played by such great performers as brass player Louis Armstrong and pianist
Duke Ellington. Bessie Smith, Billie Holliday, and other great singers emerged,
adding important elements to this style. Later, during the 1930's, a new style
of jazz called "swing" began to develop thanks to dance band leaders
such as Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller. Even today, all jazz styles, from
traditional to the most recent mixture of jazz and rock are popular.
Louis Armstrong took the jazz world by storm in
the 1920's with his amazing trumpet skills. He was the first jazz soloist to
gain prominence both in the United States and abroad. By featuring the soloist,
he changed the format of jazz music. He extended the range of jazz
improvisation and improvised not only with the music but with words as well. He
was the first jazz musician to use scat singing in which rhythmic nonsense
syllables were used instead of lyrics.
Glenn Miller led the top "swing" band
in the 1930's. His hits like "In the Mood" helped bring jazz to a
much broader and younger audience across the United States.
Bessie Smith was one of the earliest jazz
singers. She is known as the "Empress of Blues" because she most
often sang using the blues scale. This scale, which is completely unique to
jazz and blues has a very mournful and expressive sound.
Thelonius Monk was a very influential pianist
and helped jazz saxophonist Charlie Parker create
"bebop." Bebop was fast and furious. Monk's 'Round Midnight' is one
of the most recorded jazz tunes of all time.
And now prepare to jazz it
up! Please welcome The Phil Degreg Trio!
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The roots of Blue Grass
music came with the Irish, the Scots, and the English who began
migrating to America in the early 1600s. African-American
gospel and later the Blues also contributed much to its formation. This music
incorporated songs and rhythms from string band, gospel (black and
white), and the work songs and the "shouts" of black laborers.
As the early settlers moved from
Virginia to other states, they composed new songs about day-to-day life
experiences on farms or in the hills. Hence, the terms
"country music" and "mountain music".
The Monroe Brothers were one of the
most popular duet teams of the 1920s and 30s. Later, "Bill Monroe and the
Blue Grass Boys" birthed this new form of "country music". First
appearing on the Grand Ole Opry in 1939, this new band was different from other
traditional country music bands of the time because of its hard driving and
powerful sound. Bill Monroe settled on mandolin, banjo, fiddle, guitar and bass
as the format for his bluegrass band.
Most believe that the classic bluegrass
sound jelled in 1945, shortly after Earl Scruggs, a 21 year old banjo player
from North
Carolina, joined Monroe's band. When first Earl Scruggs, and then Lester Flatt
left Monroe's
band they eventually formed their own group, The Foggy Mountain Boys.
From 1948-1969, Flatt & Scruggs were a major
force in introducing bluegrass music to America through national television, at major
universities and coliseums, and at schoolhouse appearances in numerous towns.
By the 1950s, people began referring to this style of music as "bluegrass
music." Bluegrass bands began forming all over the
country and Bill Monroe became the acknowledged "Father of Bluegrass
Music.
Bluegrass bands today reflect influences from a variety of sources including
traditional and fusion jazz, contemporary country music, Celtic music, rock
& roll, and Southern gospel music.
But we all just love the sound of this original
American music! Representing the world of Bluegrass, please give it up for
Katie Laur!
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Both Cajun music and the Creole music that
evolved into Zydeco are the products of a combination of influences found only
in Southwest Louisiana. The Acadians came to Louisiana beginning in 1764 after
their expulsion from Acadie (Nova Scotia ) in 1755. They brought with them
music that had its origins in France but that had already been changed by
experiences in the New World through encounters with British settlers and
Native Americans. Taking stories with European origins and changing them to
refer to life in Louisiana or inventing their own tales, early balladeers would
sing without accompaniment at family gathering or special occasions. The fiddle
supplied music for dances, and a cappela dance tunes with clapping and stomping
provided the rhythm.
The music of the Acadians in Louisiana in the
19th century was transformed by new influences: African rhythms, blues, and
improvisational singing techniques as well as by other rhythms and singing
styles from Native Americans. Some fiddle tunes and a few ballads came from
Anglo-American sources. The Spanish even contributed a few melodies.
The
legendary fiddler Dennis McGee was himself "a perfect example of this
fascinating cultural blend." The twin fiddle tunes that he first recorded
with Sady Courville starting back in 1929 continue an even older Cajun
tradition that follows the introduction of the accordion, which changed Cajun
music due to its range.
At the same time that the Cajuns were being
transformed by new influences, the African-American descendants of slaves who
had been brought by force to America were developing their own music. The music
of the two cultures influenced one another. The music of the Creole culture
drew on the same French traditions as Cajun music. But it added the influence
of African music in the New World, along with Caribbean, or the soulful
melodies of the blues, or a combination of these sources.
By the 1920s, with the development of the
recording industry and of radio, both Cajun and Creole musicians were exposed
to other music from outside Louisiana, and they also had their first
opportunities to make their own recordings.
The frottoir is the trademark instrument of Zydeco, which
blends the sounds of blues and R&B, creating a new musical genre. For most
listeners of Zydeco, the meaning of the music is captured in Clifton Chenier's
signature song, "Zydeco Sont Pas Salé," recorded in 1965. The
Cajun/Zydeco style comes to us today from Cincinnati's own Lagniappe. Please
welcome them.
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Was barbershop harmony actually sung in
barbershops? Certainly… and on street corners. Its roots are not just the
white, Middle-America of Norman Rockwell's famous painting. Rather, barbershop
is a "melting pot" product of African-American and other styles.
Immigrants to the new world brought with them a
musical repertoire that included hymns, psalms, and folk songs. These simple
songs were often sung in four parts with the melody set in the second-lowest
voice. Minstrel shows of the mid-1800s often consisted of white singers in
blackface (later black singers themselves) performing songs and sketches based
on a romanticized vision of plantation life. As minstrel shows were supplanted
by the equally popular vaudeville, the tradition of close-harmony quartets
remained.
The "barbershop" style of music is
first associated with black southern quartets of the 1870s. The African
influence is particularly notable in the improvisational nature of the
harmonization, and the flexing of melody to produce harmonies in
"swipes". Black quartets "cracking a chord" were
commonplace at places like Joe Sarpy's Cut Rate Shaving Parlor in St. Louis.
Black historian James Weldon Johnson writes, "every barbershop seemed to
have its own quartet." The first written use of the word
"barbershop" when referring to harmonizing came in 1910.
Edison's talking machine spread harmony
nationwide. Professional quartets recorded hundreds of songs for the Victor,
Edison, and Columbia labels, which spurred sheet music sales.
Radio quartets kept close harmony singing
popular with many amateur singers, and these singers were ready for the revival
of barbershop harmony that took place in April, 1938, in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
The "Society for the Preservation and Propagation of
Barber Shop Quartet Singing in the United States" began as a songfest on
the roof garden of the Tulsa Club, on April 11, 1938. On that day, a traffic
jam formed to hear the music. Although quartets have always been the core of
the hobby, eventually quartets grew into entire choruses. All of them now make
up the Barbershop Harmony Society.
You get to avoid the traffic jam today. Because one of the
best barbershop choruses around is here to sing for you. Please welcome the
Southern Gateway Chorus!